At
the close of the eighteenth century the barbarous superstitions of
the Middle Ages concerning trade between nations still flourished
with scarcely diminished vitality. The epoch-making work of Adam
Smith had been published in the same year in which the United States
declared their independence. The one was the great scientific event,
as the other was the great political event of the age; but of neither
the one nor the other were the scope and purport fathomed at the
time. Among the foremost statesmen, those who, like Shelburne and
Gallatin, understood the principles of the "Wealth of Nations"
were few indeed. The simple principle that when two parties trade
both must be gainers, or one would soon stop trading, was generally
lost sight of; and most commercial legislation proceeded upon the
theory that in trade, as in gambling or betting, what the one party
gains the other must lose. Hence towns, districts, and nations
surrounded themselves with walls of legislative restrictions intended
to keep out the monster Trade, or to admit him only on strictest
proof that he could do no harm. On this barbarous theory, the use of
a colony consisted in its being a customerwhich you
could compel to trade with yourself, while you could prevent it from
trading with anybody else; and having secured this point, you could
cunningly arrange things by legislation so as to throw all the loss
upon this enforced customer, and keep all the gain to yourself. In
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries all the commercial
legislation of the great colonizing states was based upon this theory
of the use of a colony. For effectiveness, it shared to some extent
the characteristic features of legislation for making water run up
hill. It retarded commercial development all over the world,
fostered monopolies, made the rich richer and the poor poorer,
hindered the interchange of ideas and the refinement of manners, and
sacrificed millions of human lives in misdirected warfare; but what
it was intended to do it did not do. The sturdy race of smugglers —
those despised pioneers of a higher civilization — thrived in
defiance of kings and parliaments; and as it was impossible to carry
out such legislation thoroughly without stopping trade altogether,
colonies and mother countries contrived to increase their wealth in
spite of it. The colonies, however, understood the animus of the
theory in so far as it was directed against them, and the
revolutionary sentiment in America had gained much of its strength
from the protest against this one-sided justice. In one of its most
important aspects, the Revolution was a deadly blow aimed at the old
system of trade restrictions. It was to a certain extent a step in
realization of the noble doctrines of Adam Smith. But where the
scientific thinkergrasped the
whole principle involved in the matter, the practical statesmen saw
only the special application which seemed to concern them for the
moment. They all understood that the Revolution had set them free to
trade with other countries than England, but very few of them
understood that, whatever countries trade together, the one cannot
hope to benefit by impoverishing the other.

This
point is much better understood in England today than in the United
States; but a century ago there was little to choose between the two
countries in ignorance of political economy. England had gained
great wealth and power through trade with her rapidly growing
American colonies. One of her chief fears, in the event of American
independence, had been the possible loss of that trade. English
merchants feared that American commerce, when no longer confined to
its old paths by legislation, would somehow find its way to France
and Holland and Spain and other countries, until nothing would be
left for England. The Revolution worked no such change, however.
The principal trade of the United States was with England, as before,
because England could best supply the goods that Americans wanted;
and it is such considerations, and not acts of Parliament, that
determine trade in its natural and proper channels. In 1783 Pitt
introduced into Parliament a bill which would have secured mutual
unconditional free trade between the two countries; and this was what
such men as Franklin, Jefferson, and Madison desired. Could this
bill have passed, the hard feelings occasioned by the war would soon
have died out, the commercial progress of both countries would have
been promoted, and the stupid measures which led to a second war
within thirty years might have been prevented. But the wisdom of
Pitt found less favour in Parliament than the dense stupidity of Lord
Sheffield, who thought that to admit Americans to the carrying trade
would undermine the naval power of Great Britain. Pitt's measure was
defeated, and the regulation of commerce with America was left to the
king in council. Orders were forthwith passed as if upon the theory
that America poor would be a better customer than America rich.

The
carrying trade to the West Indies had been one of the most important
branches of American industry. The men of New England were famous
for seamanship, and better and cheaper ships could be built in the
seaports of Massachusetts than anywhere in Great Britain. An oak
vessel could be built at Gloucester or Salem for twenty-four dollars
per ton; a ship of live-oak or American cedar cost not more than
thirty-eight dollars per ton. On the other hand, fir vessels built
on the Baltic cost thirty-five dollars per ton, and nowhere in
England, France, or Holland could a ship be made of oak for less than
fifty dollars per ton. Often the cost was as high as sixty dollars.
It was not strange, therefore, that before the war more than one
third of the tonnage afloat under the British flag was launched from
American dock-yards. The war had violently deprived England of this
enormous advantage, and now she sought to make theprivation
perpetual, in the delusive hope of confirming British trade to
British keels, and in the belief that it was the height of wisdom to
impoverish the nation which she regarded as her best customer. In
July , 1783, an order in council proclaimed that henceforth all trade
between the United States and the British West Indies must be carried
on in British built ships, owned and navigated by British subjects.
A serious blow was thus dealt not only at American shipping, but also
at the interchange of commodities between the states and the islands,
which was greatly hampered by this restriction. During the whole of
the eighteenth century the West India sugar trade with the North
American colonies and with Great Britain had been of immense value to
all parties, and all had been seriously damaged by the curtailment of
it due to the war. Now that the artificial state of things created
by the war was to be perpetuated by legislation, the prospect of
repairing the loss seemed indefinitely postponed. Moreover, even in
trading directly with Great Britain, American ships were only allowed
to bring in articles produced in the particular states of which their
owners were citizens, — an enactment which seemed to add insult to
injury, inasmuch as it directed especial attention to the want of
union among the thirteen states. Great indignation was aroused in
America, and reprisals were talked of, but efforts were first made to
obtain a commercial treaty.

In
1785 Franklin returned from France, and Jefferson was sent as
minister in his stead, while John Adams became the first
representative of the United States at the British court, Adams was
at first very courteously received by George III,;
and presently set to work to convince Lord Carmarthen, the foreign
secretary, of the desirableness of unrestricted intercourse between
the two countries.

But
popular opinion in England was obstinately set against him. But for
the Navigation Act and the orders in council it was said, all ships
would by and by come to be built in America, and every time a frigate
was wanted for the navy the Lords of Admiralty would have to send
over to Boston or Philadelphia and order one. Rather than do such a
thing as this, it was thought that the British navy should content
itself with vessels of inferior workmanship and higher cost, built in
British dockyards. Thirty years after, England gathered an
unexpected fruit of this narrow policy, when, to her intense
bewilderment, she saw frigate after frigate outsailed and defeated in
single combat with American antagonists. Owing to her exclusive
measures, the rapid improvement in American shipbuilding had gone on
quite beyond her ken, until she was thus rudely awakened to it. With
similar short-sighted jealousy, it was argued that the American share
in the whale-fishery and in the Newfoundland fishery should be
curtailed as much as possible, Spermaceti oil was much needed in
England: complaints were rife of robbery and murder in the dimly
lighted streets of London and other great cities. But it was thought
that if American ships could carry oil to England and salt fish to
Jamaica, the supply of seamen for the British navy would be
diminished; and accordingly such privileges must not be granted the
Americans unless valuable privileges could be granted in return. But
the government of the United States could grant no privileges because
it could impose no restrictions. British manufactured goods were
needed in America, and Congress, which could levy no duties, had no
power to keep them out. British merchants and manufacturers, it was
argued, already enjoyed all needful privileges in American ports, and
accordingly they asked no favours and granted none.

Such
were the arguments to which Adams was obliged to listen. The popular
feeling was so strong that Pitt could not have stemmed it if he
would. It was in vain that Adams threatened reprisals, and urged
that the British measures would defeat their own purpose. "The
end of the Navigation Act," said he, "as expressed in its
own preamble, is to confine the commerce of the colonies to the
mother country; but now we are become independent states, instead of
confining our trade to Great Britain, it will drive it to other
countries:" and he suggested that the Americans might make a
navigation act in their turn, admitting to American ports none but
American-built ships, owned and commanded by Americans. But under
the articles of confederation such a threat was idle, and the British
government knew it to be so thirteen separate state governments could
never be made to adopt any such measure in concert. The weakness of
Congress had been fatally revealed in its inability to protect the
loyalists or to enforce the payment of debts, and in its failure to
raise a revenue for meeting its current expenses. A government thus
slighted at home was naturally despised abroad. England neglected to
send a minister to Philadelphia, and while Adams was treated
politely, his arguments were unheeded. Whether in this behaviour
Pitt's government was influenced or not by political as well as
economical reasons, it was certain that a political purpose was
entertained by the king and approved by many people. There was an
intention of humiliating the Americans, and it was commonly said that
under a sufficient weight of commercial distress the states would
break up their feeble union, and come straggling back, one after
another, to their old allegiance. The fiery spirit of Adams could
ill brook this contemptuous treatment of the nation which he
represented. Though he favoured very liberal commercial relations
with the whole world, he could see no escape from the present
difficulties save in systematic retaliation. "I should be
sorry," he said, "to adopt a monopoly, but, driven to the
necessity of it, I would not do things by halves....If monopolies and
exclusions are the only arms of defence against monopolies and
exclusions, I would venture upon them without fear of offending Dean
Tucker or the ghost of Dr. Quesnay." That is to say, certain
commercial privileges must be withheld from Great Britain, in order
to be offered to her in return for reciprocal privileges. It was a
miserable policy to be forced to adopt, for such restrictions upon
trade inevitably cut both ways. Like the non-importation agreement
of 1768 and the embargo of 1808, such a policy was open to the
objections familiarly urged against biting off one's own nose. It
was injuring one's self in the hope of injuring somebody else. It
was perpetuating in time of peace the obstacles to commerce generated
by a state of war. In a certain sense, it was keeping up warfare by
commercial instead of military methods, and there was danger that it
might lead to a renewal of armed conflict. Nevertheless, the conduct
of the British government seemed to Adams to leave no other course
open. But such "means of preserving ourselves," he said,
"can never be secured until Congress shall be made supreme in
foreign commerce."

It
was obvious enough that the separate action of the states upon such a
question was only adding to the general uncertainty and confusion.
In 1785 New York laid a double duty on all goods whatever imported
in British ships. In the same year Pennsylvania duties passed the
first of the long series of American tariff acts, designed to tax the
whole community for the alleged benefit of a few greedy
manufacturers. Massachusetts sought to establish committees of
correspondence for the purpose of entering into a new non-importation
agreement, and its legislature resolved that "the present powers
of the Congress of the United States, as contained in the articles of
confederation, are not fully adequate to the great purposes they were
originally designed to effect." The Massachusetts delegates in
Congress-Gerry, Holton, and King were instructed to recommend a
general convention of the states for the purpose of revising and
amending the articles of confederation; but the delegates refused to
comply with their instructions, and set forth their reasons in a
paper which was approved by Samuel Adams, and caused the legislature
to reconsider its action. It was feared that a call for a convention
might seem too much like an open expression of a want of confidence
in Congress, and might thereby weaken it still further without
accomplishing any good result. For the present, as a temporary
expedient, Massachusetts took counsel with New Hampshire, and the two
states passed navigation acts, prohibiting British ships from
carrying goods out of their harbours, and imposing a fourfold duty
upon all such goods as they should bring in. A discriminating
tonnage duty was also laid upon all foreign vessels. Rhode Island
soon after adopted similar measures. In Congress a scheme for a
uniform navigation act, to be concurred in and passed by all the
thirteen states, was suggested by one of the Maryland delegates; but
it was opposed by Richard Henry Lee and most of the delegates from
the far south. The southern states, having no ships or seamen of
their own, feared that the exclusion of British competition might
enable northern ship-owners to charge exorbitant rates for carrying
their rice and tobacco, thus subjecting them to a ruinous monopoly;
but the gallant Moultrie, then governor of South Carolina, taking a
broader view of the case, wrote to Bowdoin, governor of
Massachusetts, asserting the paramount need of harmonious and united
action. In the Virginia assembly, a hot-headed member, named
Thurston, declared himself in doubt "whether it would not be
better to encourage the British rather than the eastern marine;"
but the remark was greeted with hisses and groans, and the speaker
was speedily put down. Amid such mutual jealousies and misgivings,
during the year 1785 acts were passed by ten states granting to
Congress the power of regulating commerce for the ensuing thirteen
years. The three states which refrained from acting were Georgia,
South Carolina, and Delaware. The acts of the other ten were, as
might have been expected, a jumble of incongruities. North Carolina
granted all the power that was asked, but stipulated that when all
the states should have done likewise their acts should be summed up
in a new article of confederation. Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and
Maryland had fixed the date at which the grant was to take effect,
while Rhode Island provided that it should not expire until after the
lapse of twenty-five years. The grant by New Hampshire allowed the
power to be used only in one specified way, — by restricting the
duties imposable by the several states. The grants of Massachusetts,
New York, New Jersey, and Virginia were not to take effect until all
the others should go into operation. The only thing which Congress
could do with these acts was to refer them back to the several
legislatures, with a polite request to try to reduce them to
something like uniformity.

Meanwhile,
the different states, with their different tariff and tonnage acts,
began to make commercial war upon one another. No sooner had the
other three New England states virtually closed their ports to
British shipping than Connecticut threw hers wide open, an act which
she followed up by laying duties upon imports from Massachusetts.
Pennsylvania discriminated against Delaware, and New Jersey, pillaged
at once by both her greater neighbours, was compared to a cask tapped
at both ends. The conduct of New York became especially selfish and
blameworthy. That rapid growth which was so soon to carry the city
and the state to a position of primacy in the Union had already
begun. After the departure of the British the revival of business
went on with leaps and bounds. The feeling of local patriotism waxed
strong, and in no one was it more completely manifested than in
George Clinton, the Revolutionary general, whom the people elected
governor for nine successive terms. From a humble origin, by dint of
shrewdness and untiring push, Clinton had come to be for the moment
the most powerful man in the state of New York. He had come to look
upon the state almost as if it were his own private manor, and his
life was devoted to furthering its interests as he understood them.
It was his first article of faith that New York must be the greatest
state in the Union. But his conceptions of statesmanship were
extremely narrow. In his mind, tho welfare of New York meant the
pulling down and thrusting aside of all her neighbours and rivals.
He was the vigorous and steadfast advocate of every illiberal and
exclusive measure, and the most uncompromising enemy to a closer
union of the states. His great popular strength and the commercial
importance of the community in which he held sway made him at this
time the most dangerous man in America. The political victories
presently to be won by Hamilton, Schuyler, and Livingston, without
which our grand and pacific federal union could not have been brought
into being, were victories won by most desperate fighting against the
dogged opposition of Clinton. Under his guidance, the history of New
York, during the five years following the peace of 1783, was a
shameful story of greedy monopoly and sectional hate. Of all the
thirteen states, none behaved worse except Rhode Island.

A
single instance, which occurred early in 1787, may serve as an
illustration. The city of New York, with its population of 30,000
souls, had long been supplied with firewood from Connecticut, and
with butter and cheese, chickens and garden vegetables, from the
thrifty farms of New Jersey. This trade, it was observed, carried
thousands of dollars out of the city and into the pockets of detested
Yankees and despised Jerseymen. It was ruinous to domestic industry,
said the men of New York. It must be stopped by those effective
remedies of the Sangrado school of economic doctors, a navigation act
and a protective tariff. Acts were accordingly passed, obliging
every Yankee sloop which came down through Hell Gate, and every
Jersey market boat which was rowed across from Paulus Hook to
Cortlandt Street, to pay entrance fees and obtain clearances at the
custom-house, just as was done by ships from London or Hamburg; and
not a cart-load of Connecticut firewood could be delivered at the
back-door of a country-house in Beekman Street until it should have
paid a heavy duty. Great and just was the wrath of the farmers and
lumbermen. The New Jersey legislature made up its mind to retaliate.
The city of New York had lately bought a small patch of ground on
Sandy Hook, and had built a light-house there. This light-house was
the one weak spot in the heel of Achilles where a hostile arrow could
strike, and New Jersey gave vent to her indignation by laying a tax
of $1,800 a year on it. Connecticut was equally prompt. At a great
meeting of business men, held at New London, it was unanimously
agreed to suspend all commercial intercourse with New York. Every
merchant signed an agreement, under penalty of $250 for the first
offence, not to send any goods whatever into the hated state for a
period of twelve months. By such retaliatory measures, it was hoped
that New York might be compelled to rescind her odious enactment.
But such meetings and such resolves bore an ominous likeness to the
meetings and resolves which in the years before 1775 had heralded a
state of war; and but for the good work done by the federal
convention another five years would scarcely have elapsed before
shots would have been fired and seeds of perennial hatred sown on the
shores that look toward Manhattan Island. To these commercial
disputes there were added disputes about territory. The chronic
quarrel between Connecticut and Pennsylvania over the valley of
Wyoming was decided in the autumn of 1782by a special
federal court, appointed in accordance with the articles of
confederation. The prize was adjudged to Pennsylvania, and the
government of Connecticut submitted as gracefully as possible. But
new troubles were in store for the inhabitants of that beautiful
region. The traces of the massacre of 1778 had disappeared, the
houses had been rebuilt, new settlers had come in, and the pretty
villages had taken on their old look of contentment and thrift, when
in the spring of 1784 there came an accumulation of disasters.
During a very cold winter great quantities of snow had fallen, and
lay piled in huge masses on the mountain sides, until in March a
sudden thaw set in. The Susquehanna rose, and overflowed the valley,
and great blocks of ice drifted here and there, carrying death and
destruction with them. Houses, barns, and fences were swept away,
the cattle were drowned, the fruit trees broken down, the stores of
food destroyed, and over the whole valley there lay a stratum of
gravel and pebbles. The people were starving with cold and hunger,
and President Dickinson urged the legislature to send prompt relief
to the sufferers. But the hearts of the members were as flint,
another talk was incredibly wicked. Not a penny would they give to
help the accursed Yankees. It served them right, If they had stayed
in Connecticut, where they belonged, they would have kept out of
harm's way. And with a blasphemy thinly veiled in phrases of pious
unction, the desolation of the valley was said to have been contrived
by the Deity with the expressobject of
punishing these trespassers. But the cruelty of the Pennsylvania
legislature was not confined to words. A scheme was devised for
driving out the settlers and partitioning their lands among a company
of speculators. A force of militia was sent to Wyoming, commanded by
a truculent creature named Patterson. The ostensible purpose was to
assist in restoring order in the valley, but the behaviour of the
soldiers was such as would have disgraced a horde of barbarians.
They stole what they could find, dealt out blows to the men and
insults to the women, until their violence was met with violence in
return. Then Patterson sent a letter to President Dickinson,
accusing the farmers of sedition, and hinting that extreme measures
were necessary. Having thus, as he thought, prepared the way, he
attacked the settlement, turned some five hundred people
out-of-doors, and burned their houses to the ground. The wretched
victims, many of them tender women, or infirm old men, or little
children, were driven into the wilderness at the point of the
bayonet, and told to find their way to Connecticut without further
delay. Heart-rending scenes ensued. Many died of exhaustion, or
furnished food for wolves. But this was more than the Pennsylvania
legislature had intended. Patterson's zeal had carried him too far.
He was recalled, and the sheriff of Northumberland County was sent,
with a posse of men, to protect the settlers. Patterson disobeyed,
however, and withdrawing his men to a fortified lair in the
mountains, kept up a guerilla warfare. All the Connecticut men in
the neighbouring country flew to arms. Men were killed on both sides,
and presently Patterson was besieged. A regiment of soldiers was
then sent from Philadelphia, under Colonel Armstrong, who had
formerly been on Gates's staff, the author of the incendiary Newburgh
address. On arriving in the valley, Armstrong held a parley with the
Connecticut men, and persuaded them to lay down their arms; assuring
them on his honour that they should meet with no ill treatment, and
that their enemy, Patterson, should be disarmed also. Having thus
fallen into this soldier's clutches, they were forthwith treated as
prisoners. Seventy-six of them were handcuffed and sent under guard,
some to Easton and some to Northumberland, where they were thrown
into jail.

Great
was the indignation in New England when these deeds were heard of.
The matter had become very serious. A war between Connecticut and
Pennsylvania might easily grow out of it. But the danger was averted
through a very singular feature in the Pennsylvania constitution. In
order to hold its legislature in check, Pennsylvania had a council of
censors, which was assembled once in seven years in order to inquire
whether the state had been properly governed during the interval.
Soon after the troubles in Wyoming the regular meeting of the censors
was held, and the conduct of Armstrong and Patterson was unreservedly
condemned. A hot controversy ensued between the legislature and the
censors, and as the people set great store by the latter peculiar
institution, public sympathy was gradually awakened for the
sufferers. The wickedness of the; affair began to dawn uponpeople's
minds, and they were ashamed of what had been done. Patterson and
Armstrong were frowned down, the legislature disavowed their acts,
and it was ordered that full reparation should be made to the
persecuted settlers of Wyoming.1

In
the Green Mountains and on the upper waters of the Connecticut there
had been trouble for many years. In the course of the Revolutionary
War, the fierce dispute between New York and New Hampshire for the
possession of the Green Mountains came in from time to time to
influence most curiously the course of events. It was closely
connected with the intrigues against General Schuyler, and thus more
remotely with the Conway cabal and the treason of Arnold. About the
time of Burgoyne's invasion the association of Green Mountain Boys
endeavoured to cut the Gordian knot by declaring Vermont an
independent state, and applying to the Continental Congress for
admission into the Union. The New York delegates in Congress
succeeded in defeating this scheme, but the Vermont people went on
and framed their constitution. Thomas Chittenden, a man of rough
manners but very considerable ability, a farmer and innkeeper, like
Israel Putnam, was chosen governor, and held that position for many
years. New Hampshire thus far had not actively opposed these
measures, but fresh grounds of quarrel were soon at hand. Several
towns on the east bank of the Connecticut River wished toescape from
the jurisdiction of New Hampshire. They preferred to belong to
Vermont, because it was not within the Union, and accordingly not
liable to requisitions of taxes from the Continental Congress. It
was conveniently remembered that by the original grant, in the reign
of Charles II.
New Hampshire extended only sixty miles from the coast. Vermont was
at first inclined to assent, but finding the scheme unpopular in
Congress, and not wishing to offend that body, she changed her mind.
The towns on both banks of the river then tried to organize
themselves into a middle state, — a sort of Lotharingia on the
banks of this New World Rhine, — to be called New Connecticut. By
this time New Hampshire was aroused, and she called attention to the
fact that she still believed herself entitled to dominion over the
whole of Vermont. Massachusetts now began to suspect that the upshot
of the matter would be the partition of the whole disputed territory
between New Hampshire and New York, and, ransacking her ancient
grants and charters, she decided to set up a claim on her own part to
the southernmost towns in Vermont. Thus goaded on all sides, Vermont
adopted an aggressive policy. She not only annexed the towns east of
the Connecticut River, but also asserted sovereignty over the towns
in New York as far as the Hudson. New York sent troops to the
threatened frontier, New Hampshire prepared to do likewise, and for a
moment war seemed inevitable. But here, as in so many other
instances, Washington appeared as peacemaker, and prevailed upon
Governor Chittenden to use his influence in getting the dangerous
claims withdrawn. After the spring of 1784 the outlook was less
stormy in the Green Mountains. The conflicting claims were allowed
to lie dormant, but the possibilities of mischief remained, and the
Vermont question was not finally settled until after the adoption of
the Federal Constitution. Meanwhile, on the debatable frontier
between Vermont and New York the embers of hatred smouldered. Barns
and houses were set on fire, and belated wayfarers were found
mysteriously murdered in the depths of the forest.

Incidents
like these of Wyoming and Vermont seem trivial, perhaps, when
contrasted with the lurid tales of border warfare in older times
between half-civilized peoples of medieval Europe, as we read them in
the pages of Froissart and Sir Walter Scott. But their historic
lesson is none the less clear. Though they lift the curtain but a
little way, they show us a glimpse of the untold dangers and horrors
from which the adoption of our Federal Constitution has so thoroughly
freed us that we can only with some effort realize how narrowly we
have escaped them. It is fit that they should be borne in mind, that
we may duly appreciate the significance of the reign of law and order
which has been established on this continent during the greater part
of a century. When reported in Europe, such incidents were held to
confirm the opinion that the American confederacy was going to
pieces. With quarrels about trade and quarrels about boundaries, we
seemed to be treading the old-fashioned paths of anarchy, even as
they had been trodden in other ages and other parts of the world. It
was natural that people in Europe should think so, because there was
no historic precedent to help them in forming a different opinion.
No one could possibly foresee that within five years a number of
gentlemen at Philadelphia, containing among themselves a greater
amount of political sagacity than had ever before been brought
together within the walls of a single room, would amicably discuss
the situation and agree upon a new system of government whereby the
dangers might be once for all averted. Still less could any one
foresee that these gentlemen would not only agree upon a scheme among
themselves, but would actually succeed, without serious civil
dissension, in making the people of thirteen states adopt, defend,
and cherish it. History afforded no example of such a gigantic act
of constructive statesmanship. It was, moreover, a strange and
apparently fortuitous combination of circumstances that were now
preparing the way for it and making its accomplishment possible. No
one could forecast the future.

When
our ministers and agents in Europe raised the question as to making
commercial treaties, they were disdainfully asked whether European
powers were expected to deal with thirteen governments or with one.
If it was answered that the United States constituted a single
government so far as their relations with foreign powers were
concerned, then we were forthwith twitted with our failure to keep
our engagements with England with regard to the loyalists and the
collection of private debts. Yes, we see, said the European
diplomats; the United Statesare one
nation to-day and thirteen to-morrow, according as may seem to
subserve their selfish interests. Jefferson, at Paris, was told
again and again that it was useless for the French government to
enter into any agreement with the United States, as there was no
certainty that it would be fulfilled on our part; and the same things
were said all over Europe. Toward the close of the war most of the
European nations had seemed ready to enter into commercial
arrangements with the United States, but all save Holland speedily
lost interest in the subject. John Adams had succeeded in making a
treaty with Holland in 1782. Frederick the Great treated us more
civilly than other sovereigns. One of the last acts of his life was
to conclude a treaty for ten years with the United States; asserting
the principle that free ships make free goods, taking arms and
military stores out of the class of contraband, agreeing to refrain
from privateering even in case of war between the two countries, and
in other respects showing a liberal and enlightened spirit.

This
treaty was concluded in 1786. It scarcely touched the subject of
international trade in time of peace, but it was valuable as regarded
the matters it covered, and in the midst of the general failure of
American diplomacy in Europe it fell pleasantly upon our ears. Our
diplomacy had failed because our weakness had been proclaimed to the
world. We were bullied by England, insulted by France and Spain, and
looked askance at in Holland. The humiliating position in which our
ministers were placed by the beggarly poverty of Congress was
something almost beyond credence; It was by no means unusual for the
superintendent of finance, when hard pushed for money, to draw upon
our foreign ministers, and then sell the drafts for cash. This was
not only not unusual; it was an established custom. It was done
again and again, when there was not the smallest ground for supposing
that the minister upon whom the draft was made would have any funds
wherewith to meet it. He must go and beg the money. That was part
of his duty as envoy, — to solicit loans without security for a
government that could not raise enough money by taxation to defray
its current Failure of expenses. It was sickening work. Just before
John Adams had been appointed minister to England, and while he was
visiting in London, he suddenly learned that drafts upon him had been
presented to his bankers in Amsterdam to the amount of more than a
million florins. Less than half a million florins were on hand to
meet these demands, and unless something were done at once the
greater part of this paper would go back to America protested. Adams
lost not a moment in starting for Holland. In these modern days of
precision in travel, when we can translate space into time, the
distance between London and Amsterdam is eleven hours. It was
accomplished by Adams, after innumerable delays and vexations and no
little danger, in fifty-four days. The bankers had contrived, by
ingenious excuses, to keep the drafts from going to protest until the
minister's arrival, but the gazettes were full of the troubles of
Congress and the bickerings of the states, and everybody was
suspicious. Adams applied in vain to the regency of Amsterdam. The
promise of the American government was not regarded as valid security
for a sum equivalent to about three hundred thousand dollars. The
members of the regency were polite, but inexorable. They could not
make a loan on such terms; it was unbusinesslike and contrary to
precedent. Finding them immovable, Adams was forced to apply to
professional usurers and Jew brokers, from whom, after three weeks of
perplexity and humiliation, he obtained a loan at exorbitant
interest, and succeeded in meeting the drafts. It was only too
plain, as he mournfully confessed, that American credit was dead.
Such were the trials of our American ministers in Europe in the dark
days of the League of Friendship. It was not a solitary, but a
typical, instance. John Jay's experience at the unfriendly court of
Spain was perhaps even more trying.

European
governments might treat us with cold disdain, and European bankers
might pronounce our securities worthless, but there was one quarter
of the world from which even worse measure was meted out to us. Of
all the barbarous communities with which the civilized world has had
to deal in modern times, perhaps none have made so much trouble as
the Mussulman states on the southern shore of the Mediterranean.
After the breaking up of the great Moorish kingdoms of the Middle
Ages, this region had fallen under the nominal control of the Turkish
sultans as lords paramount of the orthodox Mohammedan world. Its
miserable populations became the prey of banditti. Swarms of
half-savage chieftains settled down upon the land like locusts, and
out of such a pandemonium of robbery and murder as has scarcely been
equalled in historic times the pirate states of Morocco and Algiers,
Tunis and Tripoli, gradually emerged. Of these communities history
has not one good word to say. In these fair lands, once illustrious
for the genius and virtues of a Hannibal and the profound philosophy
of St. Augustine, there grew up some of the most terrible despotisms
ever known to the world. The things done daily by the robber
sovereigns were such as to make a civilized imagination recoil with
horror. One of these cheerful creatures, who reigned in the middle
of the eighteenth century, and was called Muley Abdallah, especially
prided himself on his peculiar skill in mounting a horse. Resting
his left hand upon the horse's neck, as he sprang into the saddle he
simultaneously swung the sharp scimiter in his right hand so deftly
as to cut off the head of the groom who held the bridle. From his
behaviour in these sportive moods one may judge what he was capable
of on serious occasions. He was a fair sample of the Barbary
monarchs. The foreign policy of these wretches was summed up in
piracy and blackmail. Their corsairs swept the Mediterranean and
ventured far out upon the ocean, capturing merchant vessel and
murdering or enslaving their crews. Of the rich booty, a fixed
proportion was paid over to the robber sovereign, and the rest was
divided among the gang. So lucrative was this business that it
attracted hardy ruffians from all parts of Europe, and the misery
they inflicted upon mankind during four centuries was beyond
calculation. One of their favourite practices was the kidnapping of
eminent or wealthy persons, in the hope of extorting ransom.
Cervantes and Vincent de Paul were among the celebrated men who thus
tasted the horrors of Moorish slavery; but it was a calamity that
might fall to the lot of any man or woman, and it was but rarely that
the victims ever regained their freedom.

Against
these pirates the governments of Europe contended in vain. Swift
cruisers frequently captured their ships, and from the days of Joan
of Arc down to the days of Napoleon their skeletons swung from long
rows of gibbets on all the coasts of Europe, as a terror and a
warning. But their losses were easily repaired, and sometimes they
criticised in fleets of seventy or eighty sail, defying the navies of
England and France. It was not until after England, in Nelson's
time, had acquired supremacy in the Mediterranean that this dreadful
scourge was destroyed. Americans, however, have just ground for
pride in recollecting that their government was foremost in
chastising these pirates in their own harbours. The exploits of our
little navy in the Mediterranean at the beginning of the present
century form an interesting episode in American history, but in the
weak days of the Confederation our commerce was plundered with
impunity, and American citizens were seized and sold into slavery in
the markets of Algiers and Tripoli. One reason for the long survival
of this villainy was the low state of humanity among European
nations. An Englishman's sympathy was but feebly aroused by the
plunder of Frenchmen, and the bigoted Spaniard looked on with
approval so long as it was Protestants that were kidnapped and
bastinadoed. In 1783 Lord Sheffield published a pamphlet on the
commerce of the United States, in which he shamelessly declared that
the Barbary pirates were really useful to the great maritime powers,
because they tended to keep the weaker nations out of their share in
the carrying trade. This, he thought, was a valuable offset to the
Empress Catherine's device of the armed neutrality, whereby small
nations were protected; and on this wicked theory, as Franklin tells
us, London merchants had been heard to say that "if there were
no Algiers, it would be worth England's while to build one." It
was largely because of such feelings that the great states of Europe
so long persisted in the craven policy of paying blackmail to the
robbers, instead of joining in a crusade and destroying them.

In
1786 Congress felt it necessary to take measures for protecting the
lives and liberties of American citizens. The person who called
himself "Emperor" of Morocco at that time was different
from most of his kind. He had a taste for reading, and had thus
caught a glimmering of the enlightened liberalism which French
philosophers were preaching. He wished to be thought a benevolent
despot, and with Morocco, accordingly, Congress succeeded in making a
treaty. But nothing could be done with the other pirate states
without paying blackmail. Few scenes in our history are more
amusing, or more irritating, than the interview of John Adams with an
envoy from Tripoli in London. The oily-tongued barbarian, with his
soft voice and his bland smile, asseverating that his only interest
in life was to do good and make other people happy, stands out in
fine contrast with the blunt, straightforward, and truthful New
Englander; and their conversation reminds one of the old story of
Cœur-de-Lion with his curtal-axe and Saladin with the blade that cut
the silken cushion. Adams felt sure that the fellow was either saint
or devil, but could not quite tell which. The envoy's love for
mankind was so great that he could not hear the thought of hostility
between the Americans and the Barbary States, and he suggested that
everything might be happily arranged for a million dollars or so.
Adams thought it better to fight than to pay tribute. It would be
cheaper in the end, as well as more manly. At the same time, it was
better economy to pay a million dollars at once than waste many times
that sum in war risks and loss of trade. But Congress could do
neither one thing nor the other. It was too poor to build a navy,
and too poor to buy off the pirates; and so for several years to come
American ships were burned and American sailors enslaved with utter
impunity. With the memory of such wrongs deeply graven in his heart,
it was natural that John Adams, on becoming president of the United
States, should bend his energies toward founding a strong American
navy.

A
government touches the lowest point of ignominy when it confesses its
inability to protect the lives and property of its citizens. A
government which has come to this has failed in discharging the
primary function of government, and forthwith ceases to have any
reason for existing. In March, 1786, Grayson wrote to Madison that
several members of Congress thought seriously of recommending a
general convention for remodelling the government. "I have not
made up my mind," says Grayson, "whether it would not be
better to bear the ills we have than fly to those we know not of. I
am, however, in no , doubt about the weakness of the federal
government. If it remains much longer in its present state of
imbecility, we shall be one of the most contemptible nations on the
face of the earth." "It is clear to me as A, B, C,"
said Washington, "that an extension of federal powers would make
us one of the most happy, wealthy, respectable, and powerful nations
that ever inhabited the terrestrial globe. Without them we shall
soon be everything which is the direct reverse. I predict the worst
consequences from a half-starved, limping government, always moving
upon crutches and tottering at every step."

There
is no telling how long the wretched state of things which followed
the Revolution might have continued, had not the crisis been
precipitated by the wild attempts of the several states to remedy the
distress of the people by legislation. That financial distress was
widespread and deep-seated was not to be denied. At the beginning of
the war the amount of accumulated capital in the country had beenvery small.
The great majority of the people did little more than get from the
annual yield of their farms or plantations enough to meet the current
expenses of the year. Outside of agriculture the chief resources
were the carrying trade, the exchange of commodities with England and
the West Indies, and the cod and whale fisheries; and in these
occupations many people had grown rich. The war had destroyed all
these sources of revenue. Imports and exports had alike been
stopped, so that there was a distressing scarcity of some of the
commonest household articles. The enemy's navy had kept us from the
fisheries. Before the war, the dockyards of Nantucket were ringing
with the busy sound of adze and hammer, rope-walks covered the
island, and two hundred keels sailed yearly in quest of spermaceti.
At the return of peace, the docks were silent and grass grew in the
streets. The carrying trade and the fisheries began soon to revive,
but it was some years before the old prosperity was restored. The
war had also wrought serious damage to agriculture, and in some parts
of the country the direct destruction of property by the enemy's
troops had been very great. To all these causes of poverty there was
added the hopeless confusion due to an inconvertible paper currency.
The worst feature of this financial device is that it not only
impoverishes people, but be muddles their brains by creating a false
and fleeting show of prosperity. By violently disturbing apparent
values, it always brings on an era of wild speculation and
extravagance in living, followed by sudden collapse and protracted
suffering. In suchcrises the
poorest people, those who earn their bread by the sweat of their
brows and have no margin of accumulated capital, always suffer the
most. Above all men, it is the labouring man who needs sound money
and steady values. We have seen all these points amply illustrated
since the War of Secession. After the War of Independence, when the
margin of accumulated capital was so much smaller, the misery was
much greater. While the paper money lasted there was marked
extravagance in living, and complaints were loud against the
speculators, especially those who operated in bread-stuffs.
Washington said he would like to hang them all on a gallows higher
than that of Haman; but they were, after all, but the inevitable
products of this abnormal state of things, and the more guilty
criminals were the demagogues who went about preaching the doctrine
that the poor man needs cheap money. After the collapse of this
continental currency in 1780, it seemed as if there were no money in
the country, and at the peace the renewal of trade with England
seemed at first to make matters worse. The brisk importation of
sorely needed manufactured goods, which then began, would naturally
have been paid for in the south by indigo, rice, and tobacco, in the
middle states by exports of wheat and furs, and in New England by the
profits of the fisheries, the shipping, and the West India trade.
But in the southern and middle states the necessary revival of
agriculture could not be effected in a moment, and British
legislation against American shipping and the West India trade fell
with crippling forceupon New
England. Consequently, we had little else but specie with which to
pay for imports, and the country was soon drained of what little
specie there was. In the absence of a circulating medium there was a
reversion to the practice of barter, and the revival of business was
thus further impeded. Whiskey in North Carolina, tobacco in
Virginia, did duty as measures of value; and Isaiah Thomas, editor of
the Worcester "Spy," announced that he would receive
subscriptions for his paper in salt pork.

It
is worth while, in this connection, to observe what this specie was,
the scarcity of which created so much embarrassment. Until 1785 no
national coinage was established, and none was issued until 1793.
English, French, Spanish, and German coins, of various and uncertain
value, passed from hand to hand. Beside the ninepences and
fourpence-ha'-pennies, there were bits and half-bits, pistareens,
picayunes, and tips. Of gold pieces there were the johannes, or joe,
the doubloon, the moidore, and pistole, with English and French
guineas, carolins, ducats, and chequins. Of coppers there were
English pence and half-pence and French sous; and pennies were issued
at local mints in Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey,
and Pennsylvania. The English shilling had everywhere degenerated in
value, but differently in different localities; and among silver
pieces the Spanish dollar, from Louisiana and Cuba, had begun to
supersede it as a measure of value. In New England the shilling had
sunk from nearly one fourth to one sixth of a dollar; inNew York to
one eighth; in North Carolina to one tenth. It was partly for this
reason that in devising a national coinage the more uniform dollar
was adopted as the unit. At the same time the decimal system of
division was adopted instead of the cumbrous English system, and the
result was our present admirably simple currency, which we owe to
Gouverneur Morris, aided as to some points by Thomas Jefferson.
During the period of the Confederation, the chaotic state of the
currency was a serious obstacle to trade, and it afforded endless
opportunities for fraud and extortion. Clipping and counterfeiting
were carried to such lengths that every moderately cautious person,
in taking payment in hard cash, felt it necessary to keep a small
pair of scales beside him and carefully weigh each coin, after
narrowly scrutinizing its stamp and deciphering its legend.

In
view of all these complicated impediments to business on the morrow
of a long and costly war, it was not strange that the whole country
was in some measure pauperized. The cost of the war, estimated in
cash, had been about $170,000,000 — a huge sum if we consider the
circumstances of the country at that time. To meet this crushing
indebtedness. Mr Hildreth reckons the total amount raised by the
states, whether by means of repudiated paper or of taxes, down to
1784, as not more than $30,000,000. No wonder if the issue of such a
struggle seemed quite hopeless. In many parts of the country, by the
year 1786, the payment of taxes had come to be regarded as an amiable
eccentricity. At one moment, early in 1782, there was not a single
dollar in the treasury. That the government had in any way been able
to finish the war, after the downfall of its paper money, was due to
the gigantic efforts of one great man, — Robert Morris, of
Pennsylvania. This statesman was born in England, but he had Come to
Philadelphia in his boyhood, and had amassed an enormous fortune,
which he devoted without stint to the service of his adopted Country.
Though opposed to the Declaration of Independence as rash and
premature, he had, nevertheless, signed his name to that document,
and scarcely any one had contributed more to the success of the war.
It was he who supplied the money which enabled Washington to complete
the great campaign of Trenton and Princeton. In 1781 he was made
superintendent of finance, and by dint of every imaginable device of
hard-pressed ingenuity he contrived to support the brilliant work
which began at the Cowpens and ended at Yorktown. He established the
Bank of North America as an instrument by which government loans
might be negotiated. Sometimes his methods were such as doctors call
heroic, as when he made sudden drafts upon our ministers in Europe
after the manner already described. In every dire emergency he was
Washington's chief reliance, and in his devotion to the Common weal
he drew upon his private resources until he became poor; and in later
years — for shame be it said — an ungrateful nation allowed one
of its noblest and most disinterested champions to languish in a
debtor's prison. It was of ill omen for the fortunes ofthe weak and
disorderly Confederation that in 1784, after three years of herculean
struggle with impossibilities, this stout heart and sagacious head
could no longer weather the storm. The task of creating wealth out
of nothing had become too arduous and too thankless to be endured.
Robert Morris resigned his place, and it was taken by a congressional
committee of finance, under whose management the disorders only
hurried to a crisis.

By
1786, under the universal depression and want of confidence, all
trade had well-nigh stopped, and political quackery, with its cheap
and dirty remedies, had full control of the field. In the very face
of miseries so plainly traceable to the deadly paper currency, it may
seem strange that people should now have begun to clamour for a
renewal of the experiment which had worked so much evil. Yet so it
was. As starving men are said to dream of dainty banquets, so now a
craze for fictitious wealth in the shape of paper money ran like an
epidemic through the country. There was a Barmecide feast of
economic, vagaries; only now it was the several states that sought to
apply the remedy, each in its own way. And when we have threaded the
maze of this rash legislation, we shall the better understand that
clause in our federal constitution which forbids the making of laws
impairing the obligation of contracts. The events of 1786 impressed
upon men's minds more forcibly than ever the wretched and disorderly
condition of the country, and went far toward calling into existence
the needful popular sentiment in favour of an overruling central
government.

The
disorders assumed very different forms in the different states, and
brought out a great diversity of opinion as to the causes of the
distress and the efficacy of the proposed remedies. Only two states
out of the thirteen — Connecticut and Delaware — escaped the
infection, but, on the other hand, it was only in seven states that
the paper money party prevailed in the legislatures. North Carolina
issued a large amount of paper, and, in order to get it into
circulation as quickly as possible, the state government proceeded to
buy tobacco with it, paying double the specie value of the tobacco.
As a natural consequence, the paper dollar instantly fell to seventy
cents, and went on declining. In South Carolina an issue was tried
somewhat more cautiously, but the planters soon refused to take the
paper at its face value. Coercive measures were then attempted.
Planters and merchants were urged to sign a pledge not to
discriminate between paper and gold, and if anyone dared refuse the
fanatics forthwith attempted to make it hot for him. A kind of
"Kuklux" society was organized at Charleston, known as the
"Hint Club." Its purpose was to hint to such people that
they had better look out. If they did not mend their ways, it was
unnecessary to inform them more explicitly what they might expect.
Houses were combustible then as now, and the use of firearms was well
understood. In Georgia the legislature itself attempted coercion.
Paper money was made a legal tender in spite of strong opposition,
and a law was passed prohibiting any planter or merchant from
exporting any produce without taking affidavit that he had never
refused to receive this scrip at its full face value. But somehow
people found that the more it was sought to keep up the paper by dint
of threats and forcing acts, the faster its value fell. Virginia had
issued bills of credit during the campaign of 1781, but it was
enacted at the same time that they should not be a legal tender after
the next January. The influence of Washington, Madison, and Mason
was effectively brought to bear in favour of sound currency, and the
people of Virginia were but slightly affected by the craze of 1786.
In the autumn of that year a proposition from two counties for an
issue of paper was defeated in the legislature by a vote of
eighty-five to seventeen, and no more was heard of the matter. In
Maryland, after a very obstinate fight, a rag money bill was carried
in the house of representatives, but the senate threw it out; and the
measure was thus postponed until the discussion over the federal
constitution superseded it in popular interest. Pennsylvania had
warily begun in May, 1785, to issue a million dollars in bills of
credit, which were not made a legal tender for the payment of private
debts. They were mainly loaned to farmers on mortgage, and were
received by the state as an equivalent for specie in the payment of
taxes. By August, 1786, even this carefully guarded paper had fallen
some twelve cents below par, -not a bad showing for such a year as
that. New York moved somewhat less cautiously. A million dollars
were issued in bills of credit receivable for the custom-house
duties, which were thenpaid into the
state treasury; and these bills were made a legal tender for all
money received in law-suits. At the same time the New Jersey
legislature passed a bill for issuing half a million paper dollars,
to be a legal tender in all business transactions. The bill was
vetoed by the governor in council. The aged Governor Livingston was
greatly respected by the people; and so the mob at Elizabethtown,
which had duly planted a stake and dragged his effigy up to it,
refrained from inflicting the last indignities upon the image, and
burned that of one of the members of the council instead. At the
next session the governor yielded, and the rag money was issued. But
an unforeseen difficulty arose. Most of the dealings of New Jersey
people were in the cities of New York and Philadelphia, and in both
cities the merchants refused their paper, so that it speedily became
worthless.

The
business of exchange was thus fast getting into hopeless confusion.
It has been said of Bradshaw's Railway Guide, the indispensable
companion of the traveller in England, that no man can study it for
an hour without qualifying himself for an insane asylum. But
Bradshaw is pellucid clearness compared with the American tables of
exchange in 1786, with their medley of dollars and shillings,
moidores and pistareens. The addition of half a dozen different
kinds of paper created such a labyrinth as no human intellect could
explore. No wonder that men were counted wise who preferred to take
whiskey and pork instead. Nobody who had a yard of cloth to sell
could tell how much it was worth. But even worse than all thiswas the swift
and certain renewal of bankruptcy which so many states were preparing
for themselves. Nowhere did the warning come so quickly or so
sharply as in New England. Connecticut, indeed, as already observed,
came off scot-free. She had issued a little paper money soon after
the battle of Lexington, but had stopped it about the time of the
surrender of Burgoyne. In 1780 she had wisely and summarily adjusted
all relations between debtor and creditor, and the crisis of 1786
found her people poor enough, no doubt, but able to wait for better
times and indisposed to adopt violent remedies. It was far otherwise
in Rhode Island and Massachusetts. These were preëminently the
maritime states of the Union, and upon them the blows armed by
England at American commerce had fallen most severely. It was these
two maritime states that suffered most from the cutting down of the
carrying trade and the restriction of intercourse with the West
Indies. These things worked injury to shipbuilding, to the exports
of lumber and oil and salted fish, even to the manufacture of Medford
rum. Nowhere had the normal machinery of business been thrown out of
gear so extensively as in these two states, and in Rhode Island there
was the added disturbance due to a prolonged occupation by the
enemy's troops. Nowhere, perhaps, was there a larger proportion of
the population in debt, and in these preëminently commercial
communities private debts were a heavier burden and involved more
personal suffering than in the somewhat Patriarchal system of life in
Virginia or South Carolina. In the time of which we are now
treating, imprisonment for debt was common. High-minded but
unfortunate men were carried to jail, and herded with thieves and
ruffians in loathsome dungeons, for the crime of owing a hundred
dollars which they could not promptly pay. Under such circumstances,
a commercial disturbance, involving widespread debt, entailed an
amount of personal suffering and humiliation of which, in these
kinder days, we can form no adequate conception. It tended to make
the debtor an outlaw, ready to entertain schemes for toe subversion
of society. In the crisis of 1786, the agitation in Rhode Island and
Massachusetts reached white heat, and things were done which alarmed
the whole country. But the course of events was different in the two
states. In Rhode Island the agitators obtained control of the
government, and the result was a paroxysm of tyranny. In
Massachusetts the agitators failed to secure control of the
government, and the result was a paroxysm of rebellion.

The
debates over paper money in the Rhode Island legislature began in
1785, but the advocates of a sound currency were victorious. These
men were roundly abused in the newspapers, and in the next spring
election most of them lost their seats. The legislature of 1786
showed an overwhelming majority in favor of paper money. The farmers
from the inland towns were unanimous in supporting the measure. They
could not see the difference between the state making a dollar out of
paper and a dollar out of silver. The idea that the value did not
lie in the government stamp they dismissed as an idle crotchet, a
wire-drawn theory, worthy only of "literary fellows." What
they could see was the glaring fact that they had no money, hard or
soft; and they wanted something that would satisfy their creditors
and buy new gowns for their wives, whose raiment was unquestionably
the worse for wear. On the other hand, the merchants from seaports
like Providence, Newport, and Bristol understood the difference
between real money and the promissory notes of a bankrupt government,
but they were in a hopeless minority. Half a million dollars were
issued in scrip, to be loaned to the farmers on a mortgage of their
real estate. No one could obtain the scrip without giving a mortgage
for twice the amount, and it was thought that this security would
make it as good as gold. But the depreciation began instantly. When
the worthy farmers went to the store for dry goods or sugar, and
found the prices rising with dreadful rapidity, they were at first
astonished, and then enraged. The trouble, as they truly said, was
with the wicked merchants, who would not take the paper dollars at
their face value. These men were thus thwarting the government, and
must be punished. An act was accordingly hurried through the
legislature, commanding everyone to take paper as an equivalent for
gold, under penalty of five hundred dollars fine and loss of the
right of suffrage. The merchants in the cities thereupon shut up
their shops. During the summer of 1786 all business was at a
standstill in Newport and Providence, except in the bar-rooms. There
and about the market-places men spent their time angrily discussing
politics, and scarcely a day passed without street-fights, which at
times grew into riots. In the country, too, no less than in the
cities, the goddess of discord reigned. The farmers determined to
starve the city people into submission, and they entered into an
agreement not to send any produce into the cities until the merchants
should open their shops and begin selling their goods for paper at
its face value. Not wishing to lose their pigs and butter and grain,
they tried to dispose of them in Boston and New York, and in the
coast towns of Connecticut. But in all these places their
proceedings had awakened such lively disgust that placards were
posted in the taverns warning purchasers against farm produce from
Rhode Island. Disappointed in these quarters, the farmers threw away
their milk, used their corn for fuel, and let their apples rot on the
ground, rather than supply the detested merchants. Food grew scarce
in Providence and Newport, and in the latter city a mob of sailors
attempted unsuccessfully to storm the provision stores. The farmers
were threatened with armed violence. Town-meetings were held all
over the state, to discuss the situation, and how long they might
have talked to no purpose none can say, when all at once the matter
was brought into court. A cabinet-maker in Newport named Trevett
went into a meat-market kept by one John Weeden, and selecting a
joint of meat, offered paper in payment. Weeden refused to take the
paper except at aheavy
discount. Trevett went to bed supperless; and next morning informed
against the obstinate butcher for disobedience to the forcing act.
Should the court find him guilty, it would be a good speculation for
Trevett, for half of the five hundred dollars fine was to go to the
informer. Hard-money men feared lest the court might prove
subservient to the legislature, since that body possessed the power
of removing the five judges. The case was tried in September amid
furious excitement. Huge crowds gathered about the court-house and
far down the street, screaming and cheering like a crowd on the night
of a presidential election. The judges were clear-headed men, not to
be brow-beaten. They declared the forcing act unconstitutional, and
dismissed the complaint. Popular wrath then turned upon them. A
special session of the legislature was convened, four of the judges
were removed, and a new forcing-act was prepared. This act provided
that no man could vote at elections or hold any office without taking
a test oath promising to receive paper money at par. But this was
going too far. Many soft-money men were not wild enough to support
such a measure; among the farmers there were some who had grown tired
of seeing their produce spoiled on their hands; and many of the
richest merchants had announced their intention of moving out of the
state. The new forcing act accordingly failed to pass, and presently
the old one was repealed. The paper dollar had been issued in May;
in November it passed for sixteen cents.

These
outrageous proceedings awakened disgust and alarm among sensible
people in all the other states, and Rhode Island was everywhere
reviled and made fun of. One clause of the forcing act had provided
that if a debtor should offer paper to his creditor and the creditor
should refuse to take it at par, the debtor might carry his rag money
to court and deposit it with the judge; and the judge must thereupon
issue a certificate discharging the debt. The form of certificate
began with the words "Know Ye," and forthwith the unhappy
little state was nicknamed Rogues' Island, the home of Know Yemen and
Know Ye measures.

While
the scorn of the people was thus poured out upon Rhode Island, much
sympathy was felt for the government of Massachusetts, which was
called upon thus early to put down armed rebellion. The pressure of
debt was keenly felt in the rural districts of Massachusetts. It is
estimated that the private debts in the state amounted to some
$7,000,000, and the state's arrears to the federal government
amounted to some $7,000,000 more. Adding to these sums the arrears
of bounties due to the soldiers, and the annual cost of the state,
county, and town governments, there was reached an aggregate
equivalent to a tax of more than $50 on every man, woman, and child
in this population of 379,000 souls. Upon every head of a family the
average burden was some $200 at a time when most farmers would have
thought such a sum yearly a princely income. In those days of
scarcity most of them did not set eyes on so much as $50 in the
course of a year, and happy was he who had tucked away two or three
golden guineas or moidores in an old stocking, and sewed up the
treasure in his straw mattress or hidden it behind the bricks of the
chimney-piece. Under such circumstances the payment of debts and
taxes was out of the question; and as the same state of things made
creditors clamorous and ugly, the courts were crowded with lawsuits.
The lawyers usually contrived to get their money by exacting
retainers in advance, and the practice of champerty was common,
whereby the lawyer did his work in consideration of a percentage on
the sum which was at last forcibly collected. Homesteads were sold
for the payment of foreclosed mortgages, cattle were seized in
distrainer, and the farmer himself was sent to jail. The smouldering
fires of wrath thus kindled found expression in curses aimed at
lawyers, judges, and merchants. The wicked merchants bought foreign
goods and drained the state of specie to pay for them, while they
drank Madeira wine and dressed their wives in fine velvets and laces.
So said the farmers; and city ladies, far kinder than these railers
deemed them, formed clubs, of which the members pledged themselves to
wear homespun, — a poor palliative for the deep-seated ills of the
time. In such mood were many of the villagers when in the summer of
1786 they were overtaken by the craze for paper money. At the
meeting of the legislature in May, a petition came in from Bristol
County, praying for an issue of paper. The petitioners admitted that
such money was sure to deteriorate in value, and they doubted the
wisdom oftrying to
keep it up by forcing acts. Instead of this they would have the rate
of its deterioration regulated by law, so that a dollar might be
worth ninety cents to-day, and presently seventy cents, and by and by
fifty cents, and so on till it should go down to zero and be thrown
overboard. People would thus know what to expect, and it would be
all right. The delicious naiveté
of this argument did not
prevail with the legislature of Massachusetts, and soft money was
frowned down by a vote of ninety-nine to nineteen. Then a bill was
brought in seeking to re-establish in legislation the ancient
practice of barter, and make horses and cows legal tender for debts;
and this bill was crushed by eighty-nine votes against thirty-five.
At the same time this legislature passed a bill to strengthen the
federal government by a grant of supplementary funds to Congress, and
thus laid a further burden of taxes upon the people.

There
was an outburst of popular wrath. A convention at Hatfield in August
decided that the court of common pleas ought to be abolished, that no
funds should be granted to Congress, and that paper money should be
issued at once. Another convention at Lenox denounced such
incendiary measures, approved of supporting the federal government,
and declared that no good could come from the issue of paper money.
But meanwhile the angry farmers had resorted to violence. The
legislature, they said, had its sittings in Boston, under the
influence of wicked lawyers and merchants, and thus could not be
expected to do the will of the people. A cry went up that henceforththe
law-makers must sit in some small inland town, where jealous eyes
might watch their proceedings. Meanwhile the lawyers must be dealt
with; and at Northampton, Worcester, Great Barrington, and Concord
the courts were broken up by armed mobs. At Concord one Job Shattuck
brought several hundred armed men into the town and surrounded the
court-house, while in a fierce harangue he declared that the time had
come for wiping out all debts. "Yes," squeaked a nasal
voice from the crowd, — "yes, Job, we know all about them two
farms you can't never pay for!" But this repartee did not save
the judges, who thought it best to flee from the town. At first the
legislature deemed it wise to take a lenient view of these
proceedings, and it even went so far as to promise to hold its next
session out of Boston. But the agitation had reached a point where
it could not be stayed. In September the supreme court was to sit at
Springfield, and Governor Bowdoin sent a force of 600 militia under
General Shepard to protect it. They were confronted by some 600
insurgents, under the leadership of Daniel Shays. This man had been
a captain in the Continental army, and in his force were many of the
penniless veterans whom Gates would fain have incited to rebellion at
Newburgh. Shays seems to have done what he could to restrain his men
from violence, but he was a poor creature, wanting alike in courage
and good faith. On the other hand the militia were lacking in
spirit. After a disorderly parley, with much cursing and swearing,
they beat a retreat, and the court was prevented from sitting. Fresh
riots followed at Worcester and Concord. A regiment of cavalry, sent
out by the governor, scoured Middlesex County, and, after a short
fight in the woods near Groton, captured Job Shattuck and dispersed
his men. But this only exasperated the insurgents. They assembled
in Worcester to the number of 1,200 or more, where they lived for two
months at free quarters, while Shays organized and drilled them.

Meanwhile
the habeas corpus act was suspended for eight months, and Governor
Bowdoin called out an army of 4,400 men, who were placed under
command of General Lincoln. As the state treasury was nearly empty,
some wealthy gentlemen in Boston subscribed the money needed for
equipping these troops, and about the middle of January, 1787, they
were collected at Worcester. The rebels had behaved shamefully,
burning barns and seizing all the plunder they could lay hands on.
As their numbers increased they found their military stores
inadequate, and accordingly they marched upon Springfield, with the
intent to capture the federal arsenal there, and provide themselves
with muskets and cannon. General Shepard held Springfield with 1,200
men, and on the 25th of January Shays attacked him with a force of
somewhat more than 2,000, hoping to crush him and seize the arsenal
before Lincoln could come to the rescue. But his plan of attack was
faulty, and as soon as his men began falling under Shepard's fire a
panic seized them, and they retreated in disorder to Ludlow, and then
to Amherst, setting fire to houses and robbing the inhabitants. On
the approach ofLincoln's
army, three days later, Shays retreated to Pelham, and planted his
forces on two steep hills protected at the bottom by huge snowdrifts.
Lincoln advanced to Hadley and sought to open negotiations with the
rebels. They were reminded that a contest with the state government
was hopeless, and that they had already incurred the penalty of
death; but if they would now lay down their arms and go home, a free
pardon could be obtained for them. Shays seemed willing to yield,
and Saturday, the 3d of February, was appointed for a conference
between some of the leading rebels and some of the officers. But
this was only a stratagem. During the conference Shays decamped and
marched his men through Prescott and North Dana to Petersham. Toward
nightfall the trick was discovered, and Lincoln set his whole force
in motion over the mountain ridges of Shutesbury and New Salem. The
day had been mild, but during the night the thermometer dropped below
zero and an icy, cutting snow began to fall. There was great
suffering during the last ten miles, and indeed the whole march of
thirty miles in thirteen hours over steep and snow-covered roads was
a worthy exploit for these veterans of the Revolution. Shays and his
men had not looked for such a display of energy, and as they were
getting their breakfast on Sunday morning at Petersham they were
taken by surprise. A few minutes sufficed to scatter them in flight.
A hundred and fifty, including Shays himself, were taken prisoners.
The rest fled in all directions, most of them to Athol and
Northfield, whence they made their way into Vermont. General Lincoln
then marched his troops into the mountains of Berkshire, where
disturbances still continued. On the 26th of February one Captain
Hamlin, with several hundred insurgents, plundered the town of
Stockbridge and carried off the leading citizens as hostages. He was
pursued as far as Sheffield, defeated there in a sharp skirmish, with
a loss of some thirty in killed and wounded, and his troops
scattered. This put an end to the insurrection in Massachusetts.

During
the autumn similar disturbances had occurred in the states to the
northward. At Exeter in New Hampshire and at Windsor and Rutland in
Vermont the courts had been broken up by armed mobs, and at Rutland
there had been bloodshed. When the Shays rebellion was put down,
Governor Bowdoin requested the neighbouring states to lend their aid
in bringing the insurgents to Justice, and all complied with the
request except Vermont and Rhode Island. The legislature of Rhode
Island sympathized with the rebels, and refused to allow the governor
to issue a warrant for their arrest. On the other hand, the governor
of Vermont issued a proclamation out of courtesy toward
Massachusetts, but he caused it to be understood that this was but an
empty form, as the state of Vermont could not afford to discourage
immigration! A feeling of compassion for the insurgents was widely
spread in Massachusetts. In March the leaders were tried, and
fourteen were convicted of treason and sentenced to death; but
Governor Bowdoin,whose term
was about to expire, granted a reprieve for a few weeks. At the
annual election in April the candidates for the governorship were
Bowdoin and Hancock, and it was generally believed that the latter
would be more likely than the former to pardon the convicted men. So
strong was this feeling that, although much gratitude was felt toward
Bowdoin, to whose energetic measures the prompt suppression of the
rebellion was due, Hancock obtained a large majority. When the
question of a pardon came up for discussion, Samuel Adams, who was
then president of the senate, was strongly opposed to it, and one of
his arguments was very characteristic. "In monarchies," he
said, "the crime of treason and rebellion may admit of being
pardoned or lightly punished; but the man who dares to rebel against
the laws of a republic ought to suffer death." This was Adams's
sensitive point. He wanted the whole world to realize that the rule
of a republic is a rule of law and order, and that liberty does not
mean license. But in spite of this view, for which there was much to
be said, the clemency of the American temperament prevailed, and
Governor Hancock pardoned all the prisoners.

Nothing
in the history of these disturbances is more instructive than the
light incidentally thrown upon the relations between Congress and the
state government. Just before the news of the rout at Petersham,
Samuel Adams had proposed in the senate that the governor should be
requested to write to Congress and inform that body of what was going
on in Massachusetts, stating that "although the legislature are
firmly persuaded that . . . in all probability they will be able
speedily and effectively to suppress the rebellion, yet, if any
unforeseen event should take place which may frustrate the measures
of government, they rely upon such support from the United States as
is expressly and solemnly stipulated by the articles of
confederation." A resolution to this effect was carried in the
senate, but defeated in the house through the influence of western
county members in sympathy with the insurgents; and incredible as it
may seem, the argument was freely used that it was incompatible with
the dignity of Massachusetts to allow United States troops to set
foot upon her soil. When we reflect that the arsenal at Springfield,
where the most considerable disturbance occurred, was itself federal
property, the climax of absurdity might seem to have been reached.

It
was left for Congress itself, however, to cap that climax. The
progress of the insurrection in the autumn in Vermont, New Hampshire,
and Massachusetts, as well as the troubles in Rhode Island, had
alarmed the whole country. It was feared that the insurgents in
these states might join forces, and in some way kindle a flame
Congress that would run through the land. Accordingly Congress in
October called upon the states for a continental force, but did not
dare to declare openly what it was to be used for. It was thought
necessary to say that the troops were wanted for an expedition
against the north-western Indians! National humiliation could go no
further than such a confession, on the part ofour central
government, that it dared not use force in defence of those very
articles of confederation to which it owed its existence. Things had
come to such a pass that people of all shades of opinion were
beginning to agree upon one thing, — that something must be done,
and done quickly.

________________

1
A very interesting account of these troubles may be found in the
first volume of Professor McMaster's History
of the People of the United States.